


Life and Death, "Twilight Reimagined" Reimagined

by AwkwardlySadistic



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 11:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardlySadistic/pseuds/AwkwardlySadistic
Summary: There was a specific part of the ending that frustrated me. Therefore I had to change it. I would be happy to write more of the story, I would really like to see more of the female wolves reimagined, but I am also pleased with this as a one-shot.This is mostly the same ending Beau Swan and Edythe Cullen have in the original work, but I changed one major thing that I thought would make more sense, and not leave me feeling upset at the end!





	Life and Death, "Twilight Reimagined" Reimagined

“Ah. It’s almost over.” 

I wanted to be relieved, but the growing agony in my chest made it impossible to feel anything else. I stared up at Edythe’s face. She was more beautiful than she had ever been, because I could see her better than I ever had. But I couldn’t appreciate her. So much pain.

“Edythe?” I gasped.

“You’re all right, Beau. It’s ending. I’m sorry, I know. I remember.”

The fire constricted tighter, concentrating into one fist-sized ball of pain with a final, unbearable surge. The surge was answered by a deep, hollow sounding thud, My heart stuttered twice, then thudded quietly again one more time, 

There was no sound. No breathing. Not even mine. 

For a second, all I could process was the absence of pain. The dull, dry afterburner in my throat was easy to ignore, because every other part of me felt amazing. The release was an incredible high. 

I stared up at Edythe in wonder. I felt like I’d taken off a blindfold I’d been wearing my whole life. What a view.

“Beau?” she asked. Now that I could really concentrate on it, the beauty of her voice was unreal. 

“It’s disorienting, I know. You get used to it.”

“Edythe,” I said, and the sound of my own voice jolted me. Was that me? It didn’t sound like me. It didn't sound human.

Unnerved I reached out to touch her cheek. In the same instant that the desire to touch her entered my mind, my hand was cradling the side of her face. There was no in-between, no process of lifting my hand, watching it move to its destination. It was just there. 

“Huh.” 

She leaned into my touch, put her hand over mine, and held it against her face. It was strange because it was familiar - i’d always loved it when she’d done that, to see that she so obviously liked it when I touched her that way, that it meant something to her. But it was also nothing the same. There was no difference between us now. 

I stared into her eyes, then looked closer at the picture reflected in them.  
“Ahh..” A little gasp escaped my throat by accident, and I felt my body look down in surprise. It was weird - it felt like the natural thing to do, to be a statue because I was shocked. 

“What is it, Beau?” She leaned closer, concerned, but that just brought the reflection closer. 

“The eyes?” I breathed.

She sighed, and wrinkled her nose. “It goes away,” she promised. “I terrified myself every time I looked in a mirror for six months.”

“Six months,” I murmured. “And then they’ll be gold like yours?”

She looked away, over the back of the couch, to someone standing there behind us where I couldn’t see. I wanted to sit up and look around, but I was a little afraid to move. My body felt so strange. 

“That depends on your diet, Beau,” Carine said calmly. “If you hunt like we do, your eyes will eventually turn this color. If not, your eyes will look like Lauren’s did.”

I decided to try sitting up.

And like before, thinking was doing. Without any movement, I was upright. Edythe kept my hand in hers as it left her face. 

Behind the sofa, they were all there, watching. I’d been one hundred percent with my guesses. Carine closest, then Eleanor, Archie, and Earnest. Jessamine was in the doorway to another room with Royal watching over her shoulder.

I looked at their faces, shocked again. If my brain hadn’t been so much… roomier than before, I would have forgotten what I was about to say. As it was, I recovered pretty fast.

“No I want to do it your way,” I said to Carine. “That’s the right thing to do.” 

Carine smiled. It would have knocked the breath out of me if I’d had to breathe. 

“If only it were so easy, but it is a noble choice. We’ll help you all we can.”

“Edythe touched my arm. “We should hunt now, Beau. It will make your throat hurt less. 

When she mentioned my throat, the dry burn there was suddenly at the forefront of my mind. I swallowed. But..

“Hunt?” my new voice asked. “I, uh, well, I’ve never been hunting before. Not even like normal hunting with rifles, so I don’t really think I could… I mean, I have no idea.”

Eleanor chuckled under her breath.

Edythe smiled. “I’ll show you. It’s very easy, very natural. Didn't you want to see me hunt?”

“Just us?” I checked.

She looked confused for a fraction of a second, and then her face went smooth. “Of course, whatever you want. Come with me, Beau.”

She darted to the back wall of the big room - the glass wall that was a mirror now because it was night outside. I saw the two pale figures flashing by and I stopped. The strange thing was that when I stopped, it was so sudden that Edythe kept going, still holding my hand, and though she was still pulling, I didn't move. My grip on her hand pulled her back. Like it was nothing.

But I was only noticing that with part of my brain. Mostly I was looking at my reflection.

I’d seen my face warped around the convex shape of her eyes, just the center, lacking the edges. I’d only really seen my eyes - brilliant, almost glowing red - and that had been enough to pull my focus. Now I saw my whole face - my neck, my arms. 

If someone had cut an outline of my human self, this version would still fit into that space. But though I took up the same volume, all the angles were different. Harder, more pronounced. Like someone has made an ice sculpture of me and left the edges sharp. 

My eyes - it was hard to look around the color, but the shape of them, too, seemed different. So vaguely, like I was remembering something I’d only seen through muddy water - I remembered how my eyes used to look. Undecided. Like I was never sure who I was. Then after Edythe - still so hard to see in my memory, uncomfortable to try - they were suddenly more resolved.

These eyes had gone one step further than resolved, they were savage. If I walked into this self in a dark alley, I would be terrified of me. 

Which was the point, I guess. People were supposed to be afraid of me now. I took a moment to warp my face into a smile. It helped slightly. I could see the boy in my memory better, like an old picture of someone when they were young. The features similar, but faded. Sharper now. 

“Whoa,” I said. I locked eyes with Edythe in the reflecting. 

This was strange, too. Because the Beau in the mirror looked right next to Edythe. Like he belonged. Not like before, when people could only imagine that she was taking pity on me. 

“It’s a lot,” she said. 

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”

She pulled my hand again, and I followed. Before a fourth of a second had passed, we were through the glass doors behind the stairs and on the back lawn. 

There were no moon and no stars, the clouds were too think it should have been pitch-black outside of the rectangle of light shining through the glass wall, but it wasn’t, I could see everything. 

“Woah,” I said again. “That is so cool!”

Edythe looked at me like she was surprised by my reaction. Had she forgotten what it was like the first time she saw the world through vampire eyes? I thought she said I wouldn’t forget things anymore.

She took my hand and led us, running deeper into the woods. Running, like everything else, was easy in this new body, I was flying, flying down the lawn, faster than I’d ever moved, but it was simple. 

“Holy crow,” I breathed in total disbelief when we stopped. “We have to do that again!”

She paused a few feet away from me, and a frustrated expression that I knew well crossed her face. 

I laughed. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.”

She frowned. “I don’t understand, you’re in a very good mood.”

“Oh, is that wrong?”

“Aren’t you incredibly thirsty?”

I swallowed against the burn. It was bad, but not as bad as the rest of the fire I’d left behind. The thirst burn was always there, and it got worse when I focused on it, but there were so many other things to focus on. “Yes, when I think about it.”

“You know, I really thought that when your mind was more similar to mine, I’d be able to hear it. I guess that’s never going to happen.”

“Sorry.” I smiled sarcastically. “Although, I do that would be an unfair advantage.”

Edythe frowned again. “You aren’t angry at me for what I’ve done to you?” She asked quietly.

“Edythe, you saved my life. Again. Why would I be angry? What else could you have done?”

She exhaled, almost like she was mad again. “How can you…? Beau, you have to see that this is all my fault. I haven’t saved your life, I’ve taken it from you! Charlie.. Renee..”

I put my finger over her mouth again, and took a deep breath. “I’ll figure that out. It will be hard for awhile, but they’ll understand. If it wasn’t for you they would have lost me a three months earlier. I’ll just come up with a story,”

Edythe was quiet for what seemed like a long time. “Beau… you can’t. You don't understand, you’ll never be able to talk to them again. They’ll need to think you’re dead. We can’t go back to Forks. “

“No.” I said forcefully. “What’s the plan? I can't have Charlie thinking that I died after leaving that way! I’ll call, say I need time to think, that I’m going to travel around the world. I’ll tell him I took a test to get my GED. I’ll lie, and disappear for awhile, until I’m safe to be around humans,”

“That can’t work, Beau. I’m so sorry! There are rules about telling people about what we are. Bringing your family into this will only lead to more pain.”

“Then I won’t tell them, but they can't think I’m dead, not yet, We can tell them I died on some magnificent vacation, while I was happy. Not like this. I can't leave them like this. I just can’t.”

Edythe’s face looked concerned. She put her hand against my face, “Let’s hunt now. You must be thirsty.”

With my focus returning to my throat, the burn was evident and getting harder and harder to ignore. 

We ran together into the darkness that was’t dark, and I was unafraid. This would be easy, I knew, just like everything else. 

*****

The conservation will the rest of the Cullen’s went similarly as the one with Edythe. They attempted to convince me that I would never be able to talk to Charlie or my mother ever again. Everyone looked shifty. It was easy to read their emotions now that I could catch the slightest movement of their face, micro expressions were easy to read. Jessamine was keeping everyone in the room calm, but that did not hinder my ability to argue. Actually my mind seemed to be working twice as fast. 

“I’m willing to compromise.” I repeated calmly. “We can tell my parents that I died, but not right away. I would just like them to think think that I’m alive and living well for a little longer.” I could tell I was getting to them. I turned to Earnest to cement my argument. 

“Earnest, imagine what my father would go through, I left his house, angry; I blamed him for ever bringing me to Forks, ran from his house and he let me go. If he learns that I died in the night, in a car crash, or some other horrible accident, he will never be able to recover. I can't do much for him. If I have to leave, I will, but I can’t let him think I died horribly. You lost your child, I know you remember what that did to you. Please.”

I knew I had won. I could see the recognition of pain on Earnest’s face. He nodded slightly and I nodded back. Edythe put her hand in mine and I turned with her to walk back outside. I was happy that she couldn’t read my mind. I had no intention of letting my parents think that I had died. I just needed to buy some time. After I had been traveling the world I could come back, I looked older now, they would notice the changes, but assume I was just growing up. I knew from experience that people would attempt to explain the extraordinary with mundane reasons. 

I didn't want my parents to lose their son, and I would make sure they didn’t, but that was a battle for later. Right now I had the girl of my dreams. I pulled her tight against me. “I can handle anything as long as you’re with me.”

She wrapped her hands around my neck. “Then here I will stay.”

“Forever,” I said.

“Forever,” she agreed.

I leaned down until my lips found hers.

Forever was going to be amazing.


End file.
